Paul and Lucy Spadoni periodically live in Tuscany to explore Paul’s Italian roots, practice their Italian and enjoy “la dolce vita.”
All work is copyrighted and may not be reprinted without written permission from the author, who can be contacted at www.paulspadoni.com

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Our continuing efforts to make a home in Italy – and write about it

We’re back in Montecarlo! In our own
house this time. With lots of stuff to make it homey—we brought
four checked suitcases each weighing the maximum 50 pounds and two
carry-ons that probably weighed just as much, since we put the most
dense items in them, knowing that they wouldn’t be weighed.

Why, you might ask, did we need to
bring so much? Don’t they have stores in Italy? I’ve pondered
this issue as well, but only once, because Lucy didn’t appreciate
having her expertise called into question. And then I kept quiet,
because two points are absolutely clear. First, Lucy knows far better
than I how to make a house a home. And second, a happy wife is a
happy life.

I figured that if I’m going to drag
my wife to Italy for three months every year, I should gladly make
some concessions to her desires as well. Making a home, being a wife,
mother and grandmother—these are all things that give her pleasure
and that she does extremely well. So I kept any doubts to myself, and
now we’re both happy and looking forward to new adventures.

And what will we be doing for the next
three months? Good question. In the five previous trips, I have done
enough genealogy to satisfy most of my curiosity, though I will
continue my gradual efforts to find more dead and living relatives
and expand my knowledge of the family tree, just for the heck of it.
Hopefully, we’ll get a little more proficient with our language
skills. Now that we live in Montecarlo proper instead of the three
miles outside the city, we will be able to integrate a little better
into the Italian lifestyle. We’ll stroll around the city, meet shop
owners and neighbors, eat gelato, drink espresso and cioccolata
calda, and find new ways to appreciate Italian culture.

I also have another goal that I have
told a few friends but never mentioned in my blog: I want to publish
a book about our adventures in Italy. Over the past three years, I
have written a 141,000-word manuscript and had some friends read it
and help with the copy editing. Last spring I made some efforts to
find a literary agent but came up empty. During the summer and fall,
I made zero progress on refining the manuscript or searching for a
publisher because of the demands of my work schedule. That and the
fact that I want to live a normal life and see my family in the fall
and early winter has given me little time to think about my book
project.

But now here I am, with little
possibility of working on my business, my yard or seeing my American
family and friends. I need to figure out how to get my book into
print, or at the very least, on Kindle, and now I have time to
develop a strategy and work on it. It’s not an easy project, and I
think I haven’t mentioned it in my blog previously because there is
always the chance that I won’t succeed. I could fail quietly, with
few people knowing I even tried. By making my plans public, I risk
some embarrassment if I don’t succeed.

But it would be cowardly to keep quiet,
and I think the story of my quest might be informative and
entertaining, so from now on I will include some details of my book
publishing efforts. For those of you who follow my blog, I am open to
suggestions, encouragement and any other help you can offer. More
details about my plans will be set forth in the next few months.

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About Me

First off, before you hassle me about our title, Lucy thought of it. Yes, I know some people may think broad is derogatory, but the etymology is uncertain and she doesn’t find it offensive, and it made me laugh. We have been married since 1974 and are empty-nesters now, which allows me to bring my submerged Italophilia into the open. We first came to live in Italy from February-April in 2011 and have returned during the same months every year. From 2011-2015, we lived in San Salvatore, at the foot of the hilltop city Montecarlo, where my paternal grandparents were born, raised and, in 1908, married. In late 2015, we bought a home in Montecarlo. We come for a variety of purposes: We want to re-establish contact with distant cousins in both Nonno’s and Nonna’s families, we want to learn the language and see what it is like to live as Italians in modern Italy, we like to travel and experience different cultures. Even if we aren’t successful at achieving these purposes, we love Italy and enjoy every moment here, so there is no chance we will be disappointed. I am grateful to God for giving me a wife who is beautiful, clever, adaptable and willing to jump into my dreams wholeheartedly.